Interviews, forms, home-study complete... now what? 20th February

     For those of you have followed our journey of adoption, you'll know that there have been many twists and turns along the way. (If you have followed along you might find this reduntant, if you haven't here is a whistlestop tour of our journey)  It was exactly two years ago that we were in Northern Indiana going back and forth to Indy for meetings and heading over to Kouts for interviews.

Shortly after that trip we were approved to adopt from America but then over the course of the next year we never received 'the call' the one stating that there was a mother ready to give us her child. This did come as a surpise to us, at the time we expected to be uprooted for a couple of months while traveling back to the US to meet and care for a newborn. After being in the US we'd then come back to England to carry on with life as a family, but this is not the way that it has worked for us. It's about exactly a year ago now that we recognised we could adopt from this country, in fact that has been a push for more Christians to adopt. We didn't even know it was an option until sitting in meetings last Feb at a leaders conference, those couple of days up north really did change our thinking.
    

Now here we a year on from that understanding, we've dropped out of using the agency in America to adopt, we've gone through training, interviews, home-study, references and all the detail needed to adopt here. We've moved in the last six months to a smaller home, miraculously had our leave-to-remain visas come through the post, did our much anticipated trip to the US in November, it has been a time of transition. Well we have another date to be excited about... in less than one month from now we go to our adoption panel meeting.
     The panel meeting is essentially where we can be approved to adopt in this country, from that date onwards we will recieve profiles of kids through email. There are many children who are available to adopt, one of our jobs is to consider which ones we'd like to move forward with and then narrow that number down to where contact is made with their social worker. This is an exciting aspect of the journey as for us it will be the first time that we actually will be doing something other than waiting, interviewing or filling in forms, we'll be looking at children and their profiles. To some extent that ball is in our courts, usually in this process it isn't but while choosing profiles of children it is. From there other hurdles may arise but for now are excited as the report our social worker does is finished, the interviews and form filling is complete, onward to the next step.
     If you are looking for ways to pray for us, it's usually about timing and patience, so pray for the timing of God with our approval and patience for us as we carry on down this road. We are so grateful for all those who have journeyed with us, and for all of those who have lifted prayers on our behalf.